Giants helped start a splashy tradition

For nearly three decades, the thrill of victory for football coaches everywhere has often come with the unmistakable taste of orange. Or fruit punch. Or lemon-lime.

Sam BordenNew York Times News Service

For nearly three decades, the thrill of victory for football coaches everywhere has often come with the unmistakable taste of orange. Or fruit punch. Or lemon-lime.The Gatorade shower may not be football’s oldest tradition, but it is surely the most flavorful, and it would be fitting if the Giants doused coach Tom Coughlin this weekend if they beat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game. After all, it was 25 years ago that the Giants popularized the postgame rite on their way to a Super Bowl title in 1987, with Harry Carson, Lawrence Taylor and Jim Burt standing as its somewhat sticky forefathers.In the years since, the Gatorade shower has become liquidly diverse, with water and other flavored sports drinks considered suitable substitutes. Carson did a modified version of the shower when he dumped a Gatorade bucket filled with popcorn on President Ronald Regan during a White House visit with the Giants, and the shower showed its crossover capability when the Boston Celtics soaked coach Doc Rivers after winning the 2008 NBA championship.Even the digital frontier has been no match for the shower’s popularity; the Gatorade shower has a Facebook page, and dunking coaches was finally added as a feature in the latest Madden video game.As with any tradition, though, tall tales about the shower abound. Did you hear the one about the coach who got his head stuck in the bucket? How about the Gatorade shower that killed a man?That one, it turns out, is apocryphal. George Allen, or so the story went, was dunked with a bucket of water by his Long Beach State players in 1990 after they won their final game of the season. Allen, the former coach of the Washington Redskins and the Los Angeles Rams, was 72 and was said to have developed pneumonia that led to his death a few weeks later.In an interview this week, however, his son George Allen Jr., a former senator and governor of Virginia, said that was simply not true.“He got a cold from it, but that was not the cause of his death,” the younger Allen said in a telephone interview. “He had a heart arrhythmia. It had nothing to do with the Gatorade shower.” Allen added that every time he saw a coach doused on television, it made him think of his father. “And not for any bad reason,” Allen said. “It makes me think of him because getting that Gatorade shower meant he went out a winner.” Indeed, that is now what the shower almost always signifies. Seemingly after every big victory, a coach is doused in celebration.But it was not always that way. Burt, the former Giants nose tackle, initially dumped Gatorade on coach Bill Parcells in 1985 as a revenge prank; Burt was chafed that Parcells had been so critical of him leading up to a game against the Redskins and so, after the Giants won, Burt saw the dousing as a playful — but pointed — response.“He just dumped the bucket on me and of course it surprised me, but I had to really laugh because it was funny and it was his way of telling me that I was a little bit of a jerk, but the joke was on me now,” Parcells said in an email.While that is seen by most as the first appearance of the shower — with its popularity surging the following season when the Giants did it regularly during the playoffs, including at the Super Bowl when Carson donned a security shirt as a kind of disguise — there is a small faction that believes the Chicago Bears deserve credit for the craze because former lineman Dan Hampton was said to have spearheaded a dunking of coach Mike Ditka after a victory in 1984.Steve Sabol, the president and founder of NFL Films and a historian of all things football, finds no merit in that claim.“I never saw any evidence of that in any of our footage,” Sabol said in a telephone interview. “I believe it started with the Giants and it has just grown from there.” Sabol said the most impressive dunk he ever saw came at the end of Super Bowl XXXVII, when a group of Tampa Bay Buccaneers players carried a bucket as they ran behind coach Jon Gruden, who was excitedly sprinting down the sideline.Sabol said the NFL Films cameramen were running alongside the group, too, giving the entire sequence a certain “National Geographic as an antelope is being stalked quality.” Finally the players dropped the liquid on Gruden as he leaped in the air, providing what Sabol said he believed to be one of the few — if not only — “flying dumps” ever recorded.“It was impressive,” he said.Less so was the time the Pittsburgh Steelers slammed coach Bill Cowher in the face with the bucket — they made the mistake of trying to throw it, Sabol said — as well as the embarrassment that befell the 2002 Kentucky football team, which doused coach Guy Morriss too early, forcing him to watch in soaking-wet horror as Louisiana State scored a last-second touchdown to win the game.That, obviously, is the nightmare of any would-be douser, and not surprisingly there are some detractors. Bobby Ross upbraided his San Diego Chargers players when they showered him, Sabol said, and former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula was a notable opponent. Nick Saban hated being doused after winning his first Bowl Championship Series title at Alabama — it probably did not help that his players hit him on the head with the bucket and stained his white shirt with the red liquid — though he seemed to come around to the idea when he won his second title with the Tide this month.Others, however, are fans of the ritual. Steve Mariucci, a former 49ers coach and currently an analyst for NFL Network, said wistfully that “I only had two Gatorade baths in my whole life.” Mariucci noted that the old tradition was for coaches to be carried off the field after big victories — “and that wasn’t a bad idea” — but still marveled at the strategy that goes into a successful Gatorade shower.“Which guys get the bucket and how do they sneak up on him?” Mariucci said. “Who runs interference? Who distracts the coach and then steps away at just the right moment?” Sometimes the planning is difficult. Mariucci’s NFL Network colleague, former receiver Torry Holt, lamented the end of Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000, despite the fact that his St. Louis Rams beat the Tennessee Titans, 23-16.Because the game’s outcome wasn’t determined until the final play — Titans receiver Kevin Dyson was tackled a yard short of the end zone — the Rams were not prepared to shower coach Dick Vermeil.“When the game was over, we just started running all over the field,” Holt said, “and no one dunked him.” This has bothered Holt and some of his former teammates ever since.“We decided that if we’re ever in a room with Coach anywhere — a banquet or a press conference or a hotel lobby — and there’s liquid there, we’re dumping it on him,” Holt said. “It doesn’t even matter if it’s a cup of water. If it’s there, he’s there and I’m there, it’s going on top of his head.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.